Federal prosecutors began a “triage” review of immigration cases this week by initiating an examination of each of the more than 7,800 cases currently pending in Denver’s overloaded immigration courts.

Denver was chosen, along with Baltimore, to serve as a pilot for the Obama administration to gauge whether law enforcement, prosecutors and the courts can effectively prioritize cases against the worst criminals and weed out the less serious cases.

That is in keeping with administration announcements earlier this summer that enforcement will be directed at criminals and those who pose a threat to safety and national security rather than on those who have only violated immigration laws.

“This is a triage level of looking at cases. All aspects of cases will be reviewed,” said Laura Lichter, president-elect of the American Immigration Lawyers Assn. “It remains to be seen how well it will work.”

High-level representatives of the Department of Homeland Security met with immigration attorneys and immigrant rights groups in Denver this week to talk about how cases will be reviewed using prosecutorial discretion.

That means that attorneys reviewing the cases can put a hold on cases that might involve illegal immigrants who have served in the military, been in the United States for a long time, completed high school or college, are elderly or have been the victims of domestic violence.

Meanwhile, sex offenders, those who commit immigration fraud, drug dealers or those who have committed crimes of violence will be pushed to the front of the line for removal or incarceration.

Lichter said normally when immigration attorneys request prosecutorial discretion on a case, there is no recourse if the request is turned down. Federal prosecutors have agreed that if prosecutorial discretion is denied during the pilot-study review and attorneys feel a wrong decision has been reached, there will be a second chance for review.

Denver’s choice as a pilot site doesn’t mean undocumented immigrants in the state will get a free pass to citizenship. For the time being, it means they will be left in a legal limbo, without any way to work legally and without any clear path to eventual citizenship.

Raúl Cárdenas of Denver had his case put on hold last week due to a prosecutorial discretion decision nine years after he and his U.S. citizen wife applied for legal status based on their marriage and two years after he was detained by ICE for working under someone else’s Social Security number. The hold on his case means he doesn’t have to worry about being booted from the country, but it doesn’t give him any right to work while he waits for a hoped-for green card.

“They are putting a triage band-aid on our family, but they haven’t really treated the problem,” said his wife Judy Cárdenas.

“Not everyone is going to benefit from this, but it beats the heck out of having to leave the country,” said Julie Gonzales with the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition.

The coalition is monitoring a number of cases that are pending before the Denver immigration court to see if prosecutorial discretion is going to work.

The immigration attorneys’ association is also focusing a campaign in Denver to explain to those affected how prosecutorial discretion is supposed to work and to warn them away from fraudulent “lawyers” who might offer to help them obtain holds on their cases.

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